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People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it. Welcome to From On High.

Saturday, December 24, 2011

National Trend Reflected In Weblog Responses?

I attribute it to demoralization on the Left. Though it could be that the loons who, in the past, insisted on believing that the globe is warming, that Obama was going to lower everyone's health care costs by giving it out free to nineteen million poor people and letting the rest of us pay for it, that we could "stimulate" new jobs by dumping tax dollars into already existing union paychecks, that raising taxes on a small - extremely small - part of the population - that infamous 1% - could, in some way, offset a trillion and a half dollars in annual debt, may have just wised up, seen the error of their ways, and gone home.

Political websites gain and lose readers throughout election cycles, with presidential election years trending higher in unique Web traffic when compared to off-years and midterm elections. Web traffic analysts told The Daily Caller that politico.com’s traffic patterns should be expected to fit that mold: With the Iowa caucuses fast approaching, unique traffic should increase.

But Politico’s traffic losses appear to be part of a year-long trend on the political left. Media Matters For America’s website, for instance, lost 56.83 percent of its unique visitors between November 2010 and November 2011. In the same 12-month period, Talking Points Memo lost 41 percent, Wonkette was down by 32 percent, Gawker declined by 31 percent, Salon decreased by 22 percent and progressive blog Daily Kos shed 18 percent of its unique visitors.

Other political news sites, including some decidedly not left-leaning, have seen dramatic increases in unique visitors in the year-long period ending Nov. 30. Newsmax.com’s numbers increased by 247 percent, The Daily Caller’s by 124 percent, and The Huffington Post’s by 113 percent. More modest performers during those same 12 months included The Blaze (up 57 percent), The Washington Times (up 47 percent), Slate (up 40 percent), the Washington Post (up by 38 percent) and the Christian Science Monitor (up 33 percent).

Politico’s downturn in unique visitors during November 2011 is remarkable since its marquee reporting moment during the GOP primary campaign — a story about businessman Herman Cain’s past alleged incidents of sexual harassment — first appeared online late on the night of October 30. Politico followed that initial story with another 90 during the following week.

Data from Alexa, Inc., indicate that politico.com saw a traffic spike after the Cain story broke, but Compete and Alexa data show that it was temporary. Ultimately, Politico’s sustained assault on Cain may have turned off as many readers as it drew in, even as the news outlet’s reporters and editors saw heavy rotation on liberal news network MSNBC during the scandal’s early days. MSNBC’s unique visitors in November were dead-even with its October numbers.

Here at From on High, where daily traffic is down a hair from election time, but holding remarkably steady since, may reflect some of that trend as well. In the kind of commenters to the weblog that show up each day. Where once there was raucous debate (which requires two sides ...), there is virtual silence these days on the Left.

Part of that national trend?

I think so.

The Left is nowhere to be found these days.

Reality will have that effect.

How depressing it must be to wrap your belief system around certain doctrines, only to find out that they are unsupportable by real world conditions.

So they spend their day playing video games and looking at porn on the computer. And avoiding the harsh realities of the macrocosm.